


It's a Dirty Job...

by Neotoma



Category: X-Men First Class - Fandom
Genre: Gen, Jean Grey - Freeform, Scott Summers - Freeform, Warren Worthington - Freeform, X-men First Class, heroines_fest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-28
Updated: 2009-11-28
Packaged: 2017-10-03 22:15:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,091
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22800
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Neotoma/pseuds/Neotoma
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The boys are being thoughtless.</p>
            </blockquote>





	It's a Dirty Job...

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the 2009 Heroines_fest. Beta by **wizefics** and **sanj**.

Jean Grey finished her plate of apple shortbread and swept the scattered crumbs into her hand. The crumbs went into the trash, and then she turned to rinse off her plate.

In the sink was a stack of plates, several bowls, and something that might have been a tureen under the sticky red coating -- what had Hank been doing? -- and none of them were the results of her meals. Some of the bowls stank of soured milk, breakfast from yesterday at the earliest.

Boys... they were completely blind to kitchen mess until it gained sentience and tried to eat them in return.

She rinsed her plate off and put it in the drainer. No need to run the dishwasher, and she was NOT doing the guys' dishes, not again, not when they hadn't even bothered to rinse them off or put them in the machine. She'd only asked them time and again.

 

All five of them had dinner in town, after an early movie -- something Bobby and Warren had picked out on the basis that it had lots of explosions and shiny cars in it -- so Jean didn't have to confront the growing, smelly pile of dishes until she finished her breakfast the next morning.

She'd had oatmeal, thick with butter and cinnamon, in the nook looking back into the formal garden. The guys had been munching their way through toast, or toaster waffles, or hideously over-sugared cereal while she enjoyed her bowl and a cup of the Professor's mild breakfast tea.

"Uh... Jean?" Scott said hesitantly when she came back into the kitchen to put away her dishes.

Jean turned back to look at him. He was holding out his plate, crummy and covered with syrup smears. She stared pointedly at the plate, then turned back to the sink. Folding her hands, she concentrated on turning the faucet on -- her telekinesis was still shaky on fine control. Throwing a rampaging mad scientist across a valley was easy; turning on the kitchen sink without twisting the taps off was kind of hard.

She didn't pick Scott's plate up, with hands nor mind. Instead, she picked up the dish soap, and carefully turned it upside down. One good shake, and the top snapped into the open position. She dabbed a drop of soap onto her bowl, and picked up the scrubby with her mind. It wasn't the neatest job in the world, but she moved it back and forth enough that the plate was washed. Rinsing was also tricky, and she had to shake it dry, but she managed to get it to clink down in the drainer without breaking. The trick was to wrap her mind around it like a cup and lower it; instead of pushing it down like a peg in a hole.

"Jean, shouldn't you wash the rest?" Hank asked.

The drainer smashed itself against the counter as Jean turned to stare at her classmate.

The boys were stiff and leaning back, their eyes big. Warren's wings were mantled out, stretching up as if to shelter him against rain.

"No. I shouldn't," she said, and left the kitchen.

 

"I understand you're not doing the dishes anymore?" the Professor asked in the afternoon, in their daily session on developing her shields.

"I'm doing my dishes."

"Ah... but no one else's?"

"Scott *and* Hank *and* Bobby know how to run the dishwasher," Jean said. Honesty forced her to concede, "Warren probably doesn't, though."

The Professor folded his hands in front of his mouth in his usual way, but his eyes crinkled up.

"Well, perhaps you could teach him, then?"

Jean frowned. The whole point of this was cleaning up after the boys wasn't her job -- it wasn't anyone's job except each of them their own, and if they couldn't figure that out for themselves... . Well, all right, Warren knew so little about how a kitchen worked that he'd probably put dish soap in the dishwasher, which Jean knew for a bad idea from a misadventure at the age of six.

"Why is that my job?" she asked.

"Well, you have been--" the Professor stopped himself. "Yes, well. It would be charitable of you, but it is indeed, not part of your course work as a student," he conceded.

Jean sighed, and got on with her mindfulness exercise, listening distractedly as the Professor murmured soothing, steadying directions at her.

 

"Why won't you do the dishes?" Warren yelled that evening, when Jean washed her own dinner plate and ignored the ones already in the sink

"I'm not your maid, Warren," Jean grit her teeth and said.

"Well, I'm not YOUR maid." Warren snapped back.

Hank and Scott looked at each other and winced. Even Bobby looked up from slurping on his cola-frostie-thing.

"Uh oh," the three boys said, and took a simultaneous step away from Warren.

Jean narrowed her eyes at her classmate. She reached behind her with her mind, groping with blind thoughts toward the stinky, messy plates and dishes. Frowning, she cupped her mind toward those stinking dishes until she could grasp them with phantom hands. One push, and they were cupped securely enough to lift. It was like juggling to Jean -- tricky and even a little intimidating, but once she found the pattern it was a simple rhythm that looked more impressive than it felt. She made the dishes fountain and cascade, like drunken swirling jays. She laid the first ring around first Warren's feet, and stacked the dishes in interlocking pillars until the sink was emptied and he was trapped in a lattice of smelly crockery.

Jean lifted her chin, and stared at first Scott, then Hank, who each lifted their hands, placating.

"That's really cool, Jean!" Bobby said.

Jean rolled her eyes and stalked out of the kitchen.

"Hey!" Warren yelped. "You can't leave me like this!"

"Uhm, I think we need to do the dishes," Scott said. "Jean's been doing them for us for too long..."

"Yea and verily," Hank agreed, crouching down to examine the stacked crockery that encircled Warren.

"I'll wash the first half, you do the second?" Scott said.

"And Bobby and Warren can dry," Hank agreed.

"Hey!" Bobby said. "I didn't do anytthing."

Scott and Hank both looked pointedly at a particularly slimy set of bowls that contained several days worth of cereal dregs. Bright, sugary cereal dregs.

"Okay, I didn't do much..."

"You get to dry first," Hank said. "When we've washed enough dishes to free Warren, he has to dry the rest."

"_And_ put them away," Scott said responsibly.

 

**FINIS**


End file.
